The Joup Friday Album: The Atlas Moth – Coma Noir

I’m new to The Atlas Moth, so as my appreciation for their caustically unique brand of post/core/metal whatever is a fresh one. That’s why I wanted to take the open opportunity to post it here for The Joup Friday Album – to try and turn some others onto what I’m finding is a deeply rewarding album.

My own appreciation of this band and their music began about two weeks ago when a friend recommended their 2011 album An Ache for the Distance. This is the kind of metal band who some will say traffic in pretension, but to that I say bullshit. Like so many other forward-thinking groups not content to be boxed in by genre parameters, The Atlas Moth are crafting some deeply interesting, intellectual and wickedly compelling aggressive music; if that’s pretentious, well, I’m all for it. And as my own appreciation for their sound has deepened over the last two weeks both Distance and now Coma Noir are proving to be albums I find new levels in with each subsequent listen. And as many of us do, as the band endeared themselves to me and I began to read up on them, I was extremely proud to see The Atlas Moth hail from my own hometown of Chicago.

The Atlas Moth have four studio albums to date and two EPs; Coma Noir is this year’s addition to their oeuvre (see! pretension is as pretension does), and I can already tell you that, based on the strength of what I’ve gotten to know about this record in the last two days, it will most likely be in my top ten albums of the year. The key for me, I think, is track number 8, The Frozen Crown. This is a song that, as a microcosm, mirrors the entirety of the album, which feels at once epic, emotional, and completely overtaking. There’s melody, but never at the expense of raw nerve or the brutal inner core that makes this such a glowing ball of energy. And the overall production of the record – with Sanford Parker at the helm – is fuzzy and expansive, the kind of sound that uses tone and color to create a world all its own. And that world will pull you in and take you over.

So, if you’re game, put on some headphones and disappear into Coma Noir. And if you dig it, buy it.